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Gordon Moakes Discusses His Departure

The former bassist of Bloc Party, Gordon Moakes, opened up about his exit from the band, mentioning the earlier departure of drummer Matt Tong, whom he described as the “heartbeat of the band.”

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Reflections on Band Dynamics

Moakes joined the group in 2002 when they were still known as an angel, responding to an ad placed in NME by frontman Kele Okereke and guitarist Russell Lissak. He stayed with the band until 2015, contributing to their first four studio albums.

The original drummer, Matt Tong, departed in 2013 during an extensive tour, and as Moakes mentioned in a recent episode of 22 Grand Pod podcast, Tong’s departure was a turning point for him as well.

“Matt left, I want to say about 20 shows from the end of the tour, they were all festivals,” Moakes said. “I really sympathized with Matt’s position during that time.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ol7ypalgvc

“When Matt left, I had a sense that I was made for this group because I didn’t believe the band could continue without him… I thought of Matt as the heartbeat of the group, and I didn’t see a future for the band without him,” Moakes expressed.

“I wasn’t having much fun that summer, for various reasons, but mostly because Matt wasn’t there. It was crucial for me to have him around, and when he left, I felt a significant part of me left the group at that moment. I just thought, let’s get through this.”

Final Thoughts on Bloc Party

Reflecting on his last appearance as a member of Bloc Party at Latitude 2013, Moakes admitted he “had a bit too much to drink on stage,” recalling a lineup of shots in front of him. “Yes, I may have been a little sloppy,” he added, “but the door was open, and I was ready to walk through it.”

“By the way, there were many sloppy performances across the stage in different times; I wouldn’t say I was any more careless than anyone else,” he noted.

In 2015, NME reported that Okereke suggested “deeply rooted issues” led to the departures of Tong and Moakes, stating: “I can tell you that someone was doing cocaine, and someone was not fond of it. That’s all I’m going to say.”

Tong responded to these claims last year during the same podcast, saying, “Recently, it seems that many people concluded that perhaps I had a drug problem, which I did not.”

The drummer clarified that he found Okereke’s comments “disappointing,” asserting that “this had nothing to do with me and Gordon.” He expressed feeling that “there was nothing I could gain from being in this group” and that Okereke did not “foster a happy working environment.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc2kkfwzfmo

In a recent interview, Moakes reflected on the pressures during the 2013 tour. “I feel that if we managed to deliver just 80 percent of the shows we put on, we might have made it to the end,” he shared. “But we did too many shows, and we were much more together than would have been healthy at that time.”

Addressing the narcotic comments made by Okereke, he remarked, “Honestly, I find what Kele said awkward and unappreciated because it was misleading, and it wasn’t true, especially to someone who genuinely knows me.”

“So for those of us who left the group to get associated with the thought that someone had a drug problem—I didn’t in the least turn to that, but I mostly just closed the door to this,” he stated.

“It was a thought that I did not appreciate at all, and it simply wasn’t true,” he concluded.

Moakes also expressed his thoughts on the current incarnation of Bloc Party, which is touring their debut album “Silent Alarm.” “The good thing is that I still earn money from writing songs for this record,” he mentioned. “So if the band plays this album, and people listen to it and buy it or stream it, that’s a positive outcome for me.”

Moakes added, “From the perspective of whether they make this fairly, I couldn’t say.”

At the beginning of last year, Moakes launched a new group named “None,” which will be releasing their EP “Care” soon. They also toured in the UK in support of the project. Additionally, he is a member of Young Legionnaire, whose second and final album was released in 2016, titled Zero Aganight.

The 20th-anniversary tour of “Silent Alarm” is set to kick off in May and will include two major shows in Manchester and Brighton in July. Prior to that, they will head to the USA for a series of performances, initially planned to be with Metric. However, Metric recently withdrew from the tour, alleging that Bloc Party made sudden production decisions that violated the agreement between the bands.